The days are so short now. It's amazing how little sunlight there is, especially with the greyness of these winter days. Winter Solstice is just three days away, fortunately. The days will begin getting longer as the sun returns.
Of course, Christmas is just around the corner too. Porter and Fallon are old enough now to enjoy some of the season's traditions: setting up and decorating the Christmas tree, Santa Claus, and...presents. They're very excited to start seeing presents under the tree.
We've bought both of the digital cameras from Toys R Us. It'll be interesting see their photos. I'll do my best to occassionally post what they're shooting.
The weather has been unusually wet this year. However, we have been lucky since their haven't been any major wind or snow storms.
Speaking of...my plans to install an automatic backup generator fell through after the costs continued to mount, especially from almost $1k in inspection fees from three different agencies for the propane tank I had planned to install.
Hopefully we'll continue to be lucky and we won't have to rely on the kerosene heater that I bought for providing a bit of warmth if we do lose power. I may just buy a small back-up generator too, so that we can power the fridge and freezer intermittently. I guess I could also rig the fan in the heater so to run off the generator too. We'll see.
Toni's started working a couple part-time jobs. She likes having a job again but her schedule is fairly hectic since she works odd hours and has to pick-up and drop-off the kids at pre-school.
Work at Microsoft continues to be fun but challenging - in a good way. After the re-organization of the Enterprise Architecture team, I now report directly into the IT group I once dotted-lined into by attempting to align their architecture with the enterprise. It's a lot easier, and I can focus a little more on the architecture that supports a single business domain.
Alby is still the puppy he's always been - spastic and needy. But, we love him.
We've been thinking about getting a new house, possibly in Seattle, in a couple years, or maybe just buying a vacation house somewhere. We'll see how things pan out as my stock awards start paying out and overlapping. For now it's giving us something big to look forward to, which is nice during these long, dreary winters.